"Over here!" he screamed back to the men.
Leo rushed down the opening to join him, just as the Havoc moved forward above the buildings. The helicopter's rotor wash scattered the snow between buildings, lifting it into a painful frozen mist that engulfed the small space. The helicopter slowly appeared above them, and Leo aimed skyward. The rocket's blast instantly cleared the tight alleyway, and they saw the rocket explode behind the under mounted 30mm gun, just below the cockpit. Neither of them waited around for the result. They ran back though the alleyway and sprinted down the back of the buildings as the sounds of the Havoc droned off into the distance, replaced by the rumble of diesel engines. Daniel stopped them as they reached an open area.
"You're on your own, Major. Sorry it didn't work out for you. I need to be on my way out of Monchegorsk within thirty minutes. Farrington gave me the phone, so we can still make the calls you wanted. I'll take care of this once we've reached a safe distance," Daniel said.
"That wasn't part of the deal," Sabitov said.
"Neither was losing most of my team."
"The deal is still on! Keep moving! Half the Russian Army just turned the corner!" Farrington said, emerging from the same opening in the alley they had used just seconds earlier.
Farrington, Sergei and Schafer caught up to them, and the entire group sprinted across a soccer field to the next neighborhood, praying that the second helicopter didn't make a sudden appearance. A few streets into the neighborhood, they heard several massive explosions, and Daniel turned to see the second helicopter fire dozens of rockets into the lower floors of the centermost apartment building in Katayev Prospekt. The explosive impacts lit up the night sky and showered burning chunks of debris down from the mortally damaged structure.
A second salvo of rockets raced toward the building and exploded inside, blowing chunks of flaming orange fragments out of the back of the building. Daniel watched as the ten-story building tipped forward and slowly collapsed out of his view. The ground shook beneath his feet, rattling the buildings around him. He turned to leave and ran right into Major Sabitov, who stared at Katayev Prospekt in disbelief and listened to the hiss of static on his radio.
"You've done everything you could possibly do for these people. Keep moving," he said; his hand on Sabitov's shoulder.
The sound of diesel engines died out as they plowed ahead at full speed toward Grozny Prospekt. As they ran, Daniel thought about Malyshev. The sergeant had sacrificed himself so they'd have a chance to escape with the data from the BTR. There was no way he was going to screw Sabitov after that.
They'd return to the original apartment building on the outskirts of Monchegorsk, if it was still safe, and transmit the data wherever Sabitov chose to send it. At the snowmobiles they would take the time to file a report with Berg. He wished they could find another live volunteer to return with them, but he wasn't optimistic about finding another early-stage infected civilian willing to leave.
As they crossed another bleak, windswept street, he caught some movement a few houses away, followed by nonsensical muttering. He slowed to a walk in the middle of the street.
"You need the PPS?" Farrington asked, several steps ahead.
Daniel’s hand gripped the razor-sharp combat knife strapped to his leg. "No. I should be fine."
He pulled the seven-inch serrated blade from its sheath. Maybe he could find something a little more compact to carry back to Finland.
Chapter 38
Karl Berg shut his laptop and looked up at Audra, who was rubbing her temples and staring at one of her two flat-screen monitors. It was nearly eight o'clock on Sunday evening, and the two agents had been working in her office since nine in the morning. They had put most of the final touches on the package that Audra would bring to the National Clandestine Service's director, Thomas Manning, as soon as he arrived on Monday morning. Berg would meet Audra here a few hours before the director's usual arrival time and add the laboratory evidence they expected to receive from Finland.
"I wish I could be there to see the looks on their faces. It’s not every day that someone delivers a cooler stuffed with a severed head," Berg said.
"I don't like to think about it. Brilliant overall, considering what we suspect…but gruesome," she said.
"They don't seem to be constrained by the same psychological processes that keep the rest of us in check. I don't know where Sanderson finds these guys, but he certainly does his homework."
"I hate to say it, but we need people like this on our side."
"I couldn't agree with you more. I'm calling it a night. I'll be in at 3:30 to make sure the lab reports are available for your report. I'm keeping the team in Helsinki for now, just in case," he added.
The embassy in Helsinki had arranged for priority handling of the team's biological sample at the Division of Infectious Diseases in the Helsinki University Hospital. They felt confident with Sanderson's team moving the sample. The location of the Gulfstream's wreckage remained a mystery, and she didn't expect the Russians to disclose the location. Damage from an air-to-air missile was nearly impossible to hide from seasoned investigators. With the Russians playing hardball, anything was possible. The team was expected to arrive in Ouru, Finland, within three hours and would be placed on a commercial flight leaving at 11:30 AM, local time. They both doubted the Russians would shoot down a Boeing 717 flown by Scandinavian Airlines.
The evidence gathered in Monchegorsk would be the tipping point. Audra expected their package to make its way to the White House immediately after the meeting. From that point forward, it would likely be out of their hands. Pictures of the Russian Army Mobile Battlefield feed had also been sent to Reuters in London, and nobody could predict the fallout that would ensue from worldwide exposure of the Russians’ siege in Monchegorsk.
Russian military authorities had been careful with their wording of the orders, and Berg saw no mention of an epidemic in any of the digital images taken from the battalion commander’s MBT. The word "insurgency" was used in place of "epidemic", and the infected were called "insurgents." Russian military orders to shoot insurgents on sight would provoke international outrage, and the United Nations would demand an investigation, but the Russians weren't likely to bow to this pressure. Berg didn't think that the world would discover the true scope of Monchegorsk's tragedy within a useful timeframe, so with Kaparov's help, Berg still planned to send Sanderson's team after Reznikov.
He didn't trust the speed at which the White House bureaucracy would react to the threat. Their only hope of quickly discovering the true implications of the Kazakhstan laboratory remained with the Russian scientist. There was little doubt that he had poisoned Monchegorsk, with cataclysmic results. At this point, Reznikov's link to Al Qaeda was purely circumstantial and in most cases, anecdotal. They needed time sensitive information that couldn't wait for weeks of sleep deprivation and waterboarding in a secret location. If the virus had been mass produced for Al Qaeda, which he suspected, the West might be looking at days, instead of weeks, before a massive coordinated biological attack. He needed Sanderson's team to find Reznikov before the Russians silenced him.